Learning Lessons
in the
American Expeditionary Forces

Kenneth E. Hamburger
United States Army Center of Military History
CMH Pub 24-1

FOREWORD

If history has shown anything, it has underlined both the importance
and difficulty of preparing for the unexpected. A trained and ready Army
must possess a sound doctrine, competent leaders, and effective, rugged
equipment. Just as important to success is the Army’s capacity to change.
It must be able to rapidly adapt existing organizations, tactics, techniques,
and procedures to meet the demands of emerging situations. How our military
leaders did just that in the past is the subject of this focused essay.

World War I—“The Great War”—was no less of a contingency operation than
the many smaller overseas missions that the U.S. Army has undertaken over
the past decade. While the general nature of that earlier conflict was
well known to the U.S. Army’s leaders prior to the deployment of the American
Expeditionary Forces (AEF) to Europe in 1917, many of the specifics involved
with raising a force that could fight effectively in the harsh trench warfare
environment of that period were not. In fact, the small size of America’s
prewar Army and the desperate need of its European allies for fighting
forces meant that large numbers of U.S. Army troops entered combat with
minimal preparation for the task at hand. The ability of American units
and their commanders to identify problems and correct them in a systematic
fashion thus became critical to the AEF’s growing effectiveness and ultimate
success on the battlefield.

As we commemorate the eightieth anniversary of this nation’s involvement
in World War I, it is entirely appropriate to recall our earlier experience
to determine what might be relevant today. The “intellectual fieldcraft”
that served the AEF so well during World War I remains a vital part of
our heritage, one that ultimately led to the establishment of the Center
for Army Lessons Learned (CALL). Similarly, the Army’s postwar attempt
to generalize from that earlier experience—always a more difficult chore—also
contains lessons for those seeking answers to the future from our most
recent efforts in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Southeastern Europe.
We are pleased to offer this study, as we feel it may prove useful to those
currently grappling with change throughout the Army.

JOHN W. MOUNTCASTLE
Brigadier General, USA
Chief of Military History

Page 3

World War I—called the “Great War” until the world learned that there
would be more than one such war in the twentieth century—was the first
total war of the modern period. The participants, unprepared for the long
and bloody conflict that ensued after the summer of 1914, scrambled to
mobilize their manpower and industry to prosecute the war. All searched
for a decisive military victory. Instead, dramatic and largely unforeseen
changes in warfare quickly followed one another, in the end altering both
Europe and the larger Western culture that it represented. Although the
bl oody conf li ct final ly ended with an armistice in November 1918, it
cast a long politico-military shadow over the decades that followed.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, it was participating
in a major conflict for only the second time, and the repercussions of
that experience would have a deep and lasting influence on the American
military establishment. To even take part in the struggle, the tiny prewar
American Army, which the German General Staff evaluated as barely an army
at all, had the greatest imaginable hurdles to overcome. Many Regular Army
officers—captains and higher—had some experience fighting insurrectionists
in the jungles of the Philippine Islands, but had little other firsthand
knowledge of combat. Nevertheless, they had to transform the Army as rapidly
as possible from its traditional mix of regulars and locally raised militia
into a mass army of millions and to learn the techniques of modern warfare
at the same time. That the Army was able to do this and prevail over its
foes at such places as Cantigny, Chateau-Thierry, the Aisne-Marne, and
the Meuse-Argonne in 1918 was a remarkable achievement. This successful
transformation came about largely because the American Expeditionary Forces
(AEF) had consciously set out to learn all it could from the experiences
of its allies and enemies and to analyze and profit from its own successes
and failures.

Page 4

Yet many of the lessons that American fighting men bought in blood on
the battlefields of Europe were quickly forgotten by the postwar civil
and military institutions of the United States. No official history of
the war was ever written, and the United States made little attempt to
codify or institutionalize the experiences of that great conflict. To many
Americans, the larger lesson of the Great War was to avoid future entanglements
in such overseas quarrels, a judgment that manifested itself in the interwar
policy of isolationism. Similarly, the overwhelming military lesson of
the Great War was that, when needed, the United States could raise, equip,
train, and deploy an army overseas that could win any conflict. Peacetime
preparedness was an unnecessary expense. That belief persisted for the
two decades following the 1918 armistice. The next generation would pay
dearly—at such places as Bataan, the Kasserine Pass, and Guadalcanal—for
such historical mythology.

How a nation and its military use history and the experiences of the
past to chart the future in war and peace constitutes a significant subject
for the military professional in any age. Many observers have been decidedly
pessimistic regarding mankind’s ability to learn from history— George Bernard
Shaw said, “Alas! Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history
that men never learn anything from history.” It seems more helpful, however,
to heed the sage notion that “History gives us a kind of chart, and we
dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer
who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.”1

Many historians dislike drawing “lessons” from history for good reason.
Some have outlined the perils of using historical “lessons” in guiding
activities such as the conduct of foreign policy. Trevelyan commented,
“‘History repeats itself’ and ‘History never repeats itself’ are about
equally true. . . . We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances
of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.”2
Too often sentient beings have made flawed use of their own or others’
experiences; misguided applications of the past range from Mark Twain’s
cat that learned never to sit on a stove, hot or cold, to statesmen who
confused Seoul and Saigon with Munich. Nonetheless, when the lessons drawn
from experience are limited to, as Mark Twain put it, “only the wisdom
that is there,” such as the techniques of tactics and administration of
military units, the lessons can be helpful and accurate. When they are
broader and

Page 5

deal with the philosophical ramifications of war and peace, they are
more likely to suffer from the difficulties that Trevelyan noted.

In the military, and especially among those with formal training in
history, there is often skepticism about lessons from history as well.
This grows out of the tendency of some professional soldiers who have little
formal training in history to consider the study of military history as
much the same sort of utilitarian undertaking as a housewife collecting
recipes— when one has a good collection of historical analogies, all the
practitioner has to do is to run through his file until he has the right
menu of solutions to his problems. It is hard to convince some that one
studies history to sharpen judgment and, in the words of the aphorism,
“make one wise for all time instead of merely smart for next time.”

The case of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I provides
three perspectives on how that force drew lessons from experience. First,
it absorbed experiences that the French and British provided in training
the AEF in camps near the battlefields. Not all these experiences were
equally relevant to the war as it had evolved by the time the Americans
arrived in Europe, so Pershing and his staff had to be discriminating in
determining which lessons to draw from these vicarious experiences. Second
were the lessons that the soldiers of the AEF drew from their own experiences
in the war and used to adjust their weapons and tactics. The organization
quickly disseminated these lessons throughout the command, and predictably
they became its most important and lasting lessons. Finally, there are
the larger lessons that the U.S. Army took from the war in forming a postwar
army. At least partly because this last instance is clearly a case of drawing
lessons from experiences in one set of circumstances and applying them
in a different context, this use of lessons from experience was the most
problematical.

General John J. Pershing, the commander of the newly designated American
Expeditionary Forces, arrived in Paris in June 1917, two months after the
United States entered the war. Troops of the American 1st Division began
debarking at St. Nazaire by the end of the month. The French cheered both
events, but it was clear to any casual observer that the Americans would
need more than their abundant enthusiasm to make a contribution to the
war. The soldiers were an untrained organization which, in Capt. George
Marshall’s words, “hadn’t even been trained in squads left and squads right.”
He recalled one rangy backwoodsman standing sentry duty with his blouse
unbuttoned when a senior and meticulously turned out French officer asked
him a question about his

Page 6

rifle. The soldier handed the bemused officer his weapon and sat down
to roll a cigarette. Among French veterans, such incidents created a lasting
impression of Americans as energetic but bumbling amateurs.3

The French and British had been in the war for three long years by the
time the Americans arrived on the Continent. They had slowly but inexorably
absorbed the harsh lessons of the terrible refinements of modern weaponry.
They had begun the war with the enthusiasm that they now saw in the Americans,
and they had seen it dashed by the realities of the trenches and the heavy
artillery and the airplanes and the losses of the monstrous meatgrinder
battles of Verdun and the Somme and countless lesser actions. The senior
officers of the Allied armies saw clearly that the Americans were largely
untrained civilians in uniform who would require months of drill and training
before they were ready to go into the line against the Central Powers.
It seemed obvious to them that the most efficient way to use the fresh
troops from across the Atlantic would be to train them with Allied instructors
and put them into the trenches with Bri tish and French units that could
shepherd them through thei r encounters with the Germans.

Pershing, however, envisioned a different role for his force than that
of the Allies. He felt that the solution to the long stalemate that had
developed by the time the United States entered the war was to reestablish
maneuver on the battlefield. This meant that the AEF would have to avoid
embracing the trench warfare mentality of the Allies and train and fight
using what he termed “open warfare.” At the same time, he felt it imperative
that the Americans have their own sector where the entire AEF would be
employed as an integral military force, rather than be amalgamated with
the British and French forces. To the Allies, this was an anathema from
the beginning. Nevertheless, the iron-willed American commander prevailed
over all of the arguments, cajoling, and threats from the military and
civilian leadership of the Allies. He employed the AEF in a sector of its
own, using tactics that emphasized the spirit of the offensive and individual
marksmanship.

***

Professionals in the Army were attempting to draw lessons from the war
in Europe even before their nation entered the war. Articles in the professional
journals and the periodicals that served military audiences dealt with
ramifications of the war from the time of its outbreak in 1914.

Page 7

Illustration: “Soldiers on a Hill With Damaged Building in the
Background” by J. Andre Smith (Army Art Collection)

The most prominent example was the Army and Navy Journal, which many
officers read. During the war years it published a trove of detailed information
on happenings on all fronts. It carried analytical pieces on tactical and
technological developments, and professional debates raged

Page 8

in its letters columns.4 On a more official level,
the Army published translations of documents dealing with developments
in warfare and distributed them to staffs and units in the Army. These
included such items as accounts of infantry fighting in the Russo-Japanese
War and the German Drill Regulations for the Infantry.5

The Army had deployed units on the Mexican border beginning in 1913,
thereby gaining some experience in mobile operations. In addition, the
national preparedness movement that surged with the outbreak of the European
war pushed the military services to begin learning the tactics and techniques
of modern warfare. The Mexican Punitive Expedition was not an experience
to give observers confidence in the Army’s capabilities. Fifteen years
later, Pershing wrote, for example, that “the very primitive state of our
aviation [in the Mexican expedition] still gives me a feeling of humiliation
.”6 In fact, the greatest contribution of the mobilization
was to demonstrate forcefully the wretched state of American military preparedness.
The National Guard was unprepared in terms of manpower, equipment, and
training. Guard units lacked not only the equipment needed for combat—weapons
and ammunition—but also the wherewithal to even subsist in the field—adequate
tents, cots, bl ankets, and so forth. Nonetheless, the citizen-soldiers
who spent a few months’ service on the border had far more experience than
those whose military background was limited to a few successive two-week
summer encampments.7

Another movement toward preparedness was the so-called Plattsburg camp
movement, which provided military training for civilians. Maj. Gen. Leonard
Wood and former President Theodore Roosevelt promoted the idea of civilians
learning military skills in peacetime summer encampments. After the sinking
of the ocean liner Lusitania in May 1915, civilians—primarily businessmen
and professionals—journeyed to

Page 9

Plattsburg, New York, for summer training in August. Costs were borne
by private contributions, although Congress appropriated funds for the
program in 1916. The movement was as important for the enthusiasm it raised
on military themes as for the skills it taught its participants.8

When the United States actually entered the war in the spring of 1917,
however, the War Department staff had made little progress in designing
a formal training program for modern war. In his annual message for 1915,
President Woodrow Wilson had called on the nation to hold itself aloof
from involvement in the European war; additionally, military officers were
enjoined from speaking out on the war in public. So long as the national
policy was to avoid entanglement in the war, the congressionally mandated
small staffs focused on the mundane but important details of mobilization
and arguments over how the services could be expanded in the event of entering
the war.

The challenges confronting the military staff were immense. In 1917
only nineteen officers comprised the War Department General Staff, a staff
that would mushroom to over one thousand by the time of the armistice.
The Army had few weapons beyond small arms that were similar to those combatants
were using in Europe, and no personnel trained to use them. For the United
States to make a timely contribution to the Allies in land warfare, it
would have to accept weapons and training from them, at least in the beginning.

***

Pershing had few illusions about how much training his AEF would need.
In critical subjects ranging from field hygiene and small unit tactics
to the employment of machine guns and howitzers, all ranks were at best
enthusiastic novices. Pershing considered training

the most important question that confronted us in the preparation of
our forces of citizen soldiery for efficient service. . . . Few people
can realize what a stupendous undertaking it was to teach these vast numbers
their various duties when such a large percentage of them were ignorant
of practically everything pertaining to the business of the soldier in
war. First of all, most of the officer personnel available had little or
no military experience, and had to be trained in the manifold duties of
commanders. They had to learn the interior economy of their units—messing,
housing, clothing, and, in general, caring for their men— as well as methods
of instruction and the art of leading them in battle.9

Page 10

Because of the magnitude of the task, Pershing felt that the G–3 of
the AEF staff would be overwhelmed if given the responsibilities for both
training and operations, in accordance with conventional doctrine. Thus
he directed that a new staff officer, the G–5, take over responsibility
for training. He chose as G–5 Lt. Col. Paul B. Malone, a 45-year-old member
of the West Point class of 1894. A tactful and personable officer, Malone
went about organizing the training of the AEF during the first months in
Europe with dispatch and efficiency. In February of 1918, however, Pershing
asked Malone where he would like to serve, and he replied, “At the fighting
front.” He was given command of an infantry brigade, which he led through
the carnage of 1918, and amassed six awards for his heroism and leadership.10

Malone’s replacement as the AEF’s training officer was Lt. Col. Harold
B. Fiske. Forty-six years old, Fiske had graduated in the middle of the
West Point class of 1897. He was a quiet man of morose disposition who
kept his own counsel and ran roughshod over the opinions of others. His
piercing gaze through wire-rimmed glasses and the hard line of his mouth
curving down at the corners made him appear critical of all he surveyed.
He dismissed out of hand those officers who failed to meet his unyielding
standards of ethical and tactical proficiency; nonetheless, he repaid the
hardworking and competent officer with unmatched loyalty and professionalism.11

Fiske managed training with an iron grip, as one might expect: “The
prominent characteristics of training in France were a definite system,
policy, and doctrine somewhat rigidly and uniformly prescribed by the highest
authority, and a constant followup by inspector-instructors.”12
He demanded strict compliance with the principles Pershing set for training
the AEF. They included a rigorous emphasis on the offensive, a stress on
the rifle and the bayonet, and inflexible standards of discipline—“the
standards of the American Army will be those of West Point.”13
General Robert Lee Bullard, one of the most aggressive and hard-driving
field commanders of the war, characterized Fiske’s training as “the hardest,
most uncompromising and intensive system of drill that the American Army
has ever known or probably ever will know.”14

The Training Section of the General Staff was charged with supervising
the schools and the conduct of training; translating foreign manuals and
preparing AEF training manuals “with incorporation of changes suggested
by actual experiences”—lessons learned by another name—and training inspections.
Training inspections included not only observing units in training but
also inspecting those units in actual operations. Inspectors had free rein
to accompany any unit, with the goal to have one training inspector for
every division on line. The G–5 Section reported after the war that “in
theory, what the Section tried to do was not to disturb any one in his
work but to join the troops and simply observe.” This would place the observers
“in an extraordinarily fine position for cool judgment as to what was happening
and why.”15

It is easy to question just how effectively a colonel from AEF headquarters
at Chaumont could “join the troops and simply observe” operations given
Pershing’s reputation of relieving commanders for relatively minor infractions.
General Bullard penned in his diary: “He is

Page 12

looking for results. He intends to have them. He will sacrifice any
man who does not bring them.”16 When one reflects
that the inspecting colonel would be working for Colonel Fiske at AEF headquarters,
with his reputation for rigidly high standards, the situation becomes even
more threatening. In the military experience of many soldiers, “in-house
inspections”—which wags described as “just between you and your boss and
his boss”—have always been some of the most deadly. Nonetheless, in the
AEF such inspections were effective at capturing both positive and negative
aspects of operations, which then could be published for the edification
of all.

There was little flexibility in Fiske’s approach to training, but with
the task at hand there may have been littl e place for flexibility. Pershing’s
chief of staff, Brig. Gen. James G. Harbord, said after the war that Fiske
operated “with an efficiency that was not conducive to popularity with
a raw command but was a great service for his country . ”17
In short, given the limited experience of the AEF’s officer and noncommissioned
officer corps, a rigid program of indoctrination and training was an absolute
necessity.

The most relevant and readily available lessons for the soldiers of
the AEF to absorb were those of the Allies. Both the French and British
offered to provide instructors for the Americans. Both had large school
systems and training centers set up in safe areas behind the front where
they trained both individuals and units. These included officer candidate
schools as well as schools for enlisted men and specialists, and they offered
to let soldiers from the AEF attend these courses. The schools adjusted
their curricula as experiences at the front demonstrated new requirements.
One American observer remarked that this allowed them to provi de “courses
in the latest methods and developments for officers.”18
A particular feature of these schools was that they were close enough to
the front that units could undergo instruction, be placed in a quiet sector
of the line for battlefield experience, and then be returned to the rear
to correct shortcomings observed at the front.19

The AEF quickly built up a large system of their own “corps schools”
where they fashioned curricula of four to five weeks. About a third of
a division’s officers and noncommissioned officers attended such classes
prior

to the arrival of their divisions in Europe. Although selected graduates
went on to attend the “Army School” or the General Staff College of the
AEF at Langres, most returned to their units to train them as they arrived.
Pershing described the importance of the schools after the war:

A school system would have been desirable in the best of armies, but
it was indispensable in an army which had to be created almost wholly from
raw material. The training of troops for combat was, of course, the primary
objective, and schools for instructors were merely a means to that end.20

Unit training was as important as individual training. Ideally, units
would spend about a month training in small unit tactics, weapons proficiency,
and similar tasks. Then companies and sometimes battalions rotated into
the trenches as part of a regiment on line. Finally, American divisions
would reassemble for a month’s training with all elements of the division
before moving into line with a corps.21

Page 14

The pace of the AEF units arriving in France by the summer of 1918,
along with the press of the war during that crucial summer, meant that
reality rarely conformed to the ideal. The 79th Division, for example,
was one of sixteen created in the spring of 1917. Its draftees came from
eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. The soldiers
had received training at Camp Meade, Maryland, from October 1917 through
May 1918. The advance party of the division departed for France toward
the end of June 1918, and the rest of the division arrived in France by
the first of August. But many of the soldiers had been called to the colors
as late as the draft of June 1918 and had received virtually no instruction.
In the words of the anonymous division historian,

The war was not waiting for anyone in those days of August, 1918. .
. . It was the task of the Seventy-Ninth Division to learn much and learn
quickly, for it was needed at the front. Rifle ranges were constructed
and the men who had joined in the June draft had their first opportunity
to receive instruction in musketry, to fire at various ranges and to become
generally acquainted with their rifles. Specialists were selected and received
individual instruction as automatic riflemen, carriers, rifle grenadiers,
runners, bombers, and so forth. A Division Intelligence School . . . had
a large attendance and trained the men who subsequently functioned in the
intelligence detachments. . . . The machine gun battalions sent experts
to the machine gun companies of the infantry to train them in handling
the light Brownings, first of their kind to be used abroad. Maneuvers formed
a large part of the instructions. Division terrain exercises were held
weekly . . . to train . . . in the important work of liaison and combat.22

The Americans adopted a huge division organization consisting of more
than 28,000 men and approximating the size of a French, British, or German
corps. Although part of the argument for such a large organization was
the shortage of trained American officers required for divisions, the primary
rationale was tactical. In keeping with the demands of trench warfare,
American military leaders believed that larger divisions would have greater
staying power on the battlefield, lessening the need for rotation in battle
and simplifying both the training of staffs and division support units
and the overall conduct of defensive operations. General Harbord explained
that

we sought to provide a division with sufficient overhead in the way
of staff, communications, and supplies to permit the infantry and artillery
to continue fighting for some time. With the deep and very powerful defense
developed in the World War, no decisive stroke could be secured in battle
without a penetration necessitating several days of steady fighting. It
was thus reasoned that the infantry of the division must be of such strength
as to permit it to continue in combat for such a

Page 15

number of days that the continuity of battle would not be interrupted
before decision was reached.23

At first all the schools and training areas used British and French
instructors, but as soon as possible American instructors took over. From
the beginning, American leaders noted several problems with Allied instructors.
First, the British and French often did not agree on organization or tactics,
and each sought to convince the leaders of the AEF that their methods were
superior. The British stressed aggressive trench fighting with bayonet
and grenade, while the French placed more emphasis on artillery and the
machine gun.24 The French instructors emphasized
teaching through lectures, and the need to translate most of the lectures
proved deadly boring and counterproductive in practice. The commanding
general of the 1st Division observed:

Training in conjunction with French troops is slow and we have found
that after one or two demonstrations by French organizations it is difficult
to keep our soldiers interested. The principal assistance we can derive
from the French or English will be from officers and specially selected
noncommissioned officers of those armies acting as advisors and critics.25

In addition, many French and British trainers were psychologically tired
and somewhat demoralized, and Pershing worried that their pessimism would
infect his eager force. The French units taken from the line to train the
AEF, in Pershing’s words, were “worn and weary, [and] failed to set an
example of the aggressiveness which we were striving to inculcate in our
men.”26 Defeatism was a greater concern, and Americans
noted it in both British and French ranks. One lieutenant remembered his
experiences with Allied soldiers in the trenches:

Far from being determined to sell their lives or their sectors as dearly
as possible, they were primarily interested only in survival, in holding
their areas as cheaply as possible by being careful not to provoke “the
Boche.” They were “fed up.” They had “had their noses full.” It was highly
disconcerting to a newly-arrived American officer to be told by his British
host that, if the Germans wanted his part of France, they might well come
and take it. He had had more than enough of it. Or to be reproached by
a French officer for having prolonged a lost war by gratuitously intervening
in it.27

Page 16

But AEF leaders believed that the greatest shortcoming of the European
instructors was their refusal to accept that the Americans had any valid
conceptions on warfare. Pershing adamantly believed that only returning
maneuver to the battlefield would bring success:

It was my opinion that the victory could not be won by the costly process
of attrition, but it must be won by driving the enemy out into the open
and engaging him in a war of movement. Instruction in this kind of warfare
was based upon individual and group initiative, resourcefulness and tactical
judgment, which were also of great advantage in trench warfare. Therefore,
we took decided issue with the Allies and, without neglecting thorough
preparation for trench fighting, undertook to train mainly for open combat,
with the object from the start of vigorously forcing the offensive.28

General Harbord remembered Pershing’s philosophy:

Some day someone somewhere would come out of his trenches and start
forward, and thus a stalemate would be broken and the War would eventually
be won. When even one soldier climbed out and moved to the front, the adventure
for him became open warfare, a war of movement, and the essentials of minor
tactics were then in play. His flanks and rear must be protected as his
maneuvers began. Mere training in trench warfare would not be enough for
our officers when this event happened.29

Consequently, Pershing ordered a training program stressing open warfare
methods and offensive action: “The . . . methods to be employed must remain
and become distinctly our own. All instruction must contemplate the assumption
of a vigorous offensive. Its purpose will be emphasized in every phase
of training until it becomes a settled habit of thought.”30

Intimately connected with open warfare was the mastery of rifle marksmanship.
The very term evoked images of self-reliant, stubborn pioneers who embodied
the ideals and myths of the American frontier. Army leaders believed that
marksmanship was a singularly American tradition that they could exploit.
As General Harbord put it, “The authentic story of an Allied soldier with
a rifle strapped on his back, chasing an enemy to get close enough to throw
a hand grenade would never have been true of any American.”31
In August 1917 Pershing cabled the War Department that all soldiers shipped
to France needed to be fully trained in marksmanship. The pace of training
and hurrying divisions to France, however, never allowed adequate marksmanship
training in the United

Page 17

Illustration: “Testing Times” by F. C. Yohn (Army Art Collection)

Page 18

States. Consequently, the AEF assumed responsibility for such instruction
as well as developing the myriad other skills demanded of their new soldiers,
with the burden of the labor falling on small unit leaders. Typical were
the measures taken by Lt. Clarence R. Huebner, who had spent seven years
as an enlisted soldier before the war and had set up his own company rifle
range, directing that his men fire five rounds every day at tin cans from
50-and 100-yard ranges.32

The civilian and military chiefs of the Alli ed Powers regarded Pershing’s
emphasis on maneuver and open warfare as suicidal. In addition, they were
determined that the AEF would serve as part of an Allied army, either as
units or as individuals, and not as an American Army with its own sector.
Amalgamation—the integration of American troops in some fashion with their
own—promised the quickest solution to their growing shortages of manpower.
The French and British military and civilian leaders thus argued incessantly
with Pershing over the matter and, when he proved adamant, went around
him to President Wilson. Unfortunately for their aspirations for the AEF,
neither Wilson nor his advisers agreed. Although the president gave Pershing
a relatively free hand in arguing the matter, it was obviously highly political.33
Using American doughboys as cannon fodder for British- or French-led offensives
would have obvious domestic effects in the American heartland, especially
if those attacks fared no better than earlier ones. Pershing’s only compromises
on the amalgamation question were to provide four black regiments to the
French Army and a white corps to the British. Although these units served
throughout the war with the Allies, building a distinguished combat record,
the AEF commander refused to expand the program further.34

Mistrusting the thrust of the AEF’s approach and its training, the Allies
also tried consciously to alter its direction. Only in the spring of 1918,
when some small engagements by the AEF had proved that it could stand up
to the Germans, did the French grudgingly admit that the Americans could
benefit from the earlier Allied experiences while still adamantly refusing
to accept all their current methods. The French liaison officers with the
AEF gradually saw the Americans as gifted with sound common sense and understood
that as they accumulated their own experiences in the war, they would learn
more from them than the

Page 19

French could teach them.35 But regardless of
changing sentiments, Pershing remained determined to replace all the Allied
trainers as soon as possible, a goal that he achieved by August 1918.36

***

Germans drew first blood from the AEF in the French sector on a Saturday
morning, 3 November 1917. The 1st Division had nearly completed its training
with the French, and final training exercises were to take place as one
infantry and one artillery battalion from each American regiment went into
line with a French regiment for a ten-day period. A raid by a German patrol
hit the American sector at Artois on the first morning of their tour and
killed three Americans and captured sixteen. After daylight, Capt. George
Marshall visited the unit and determined that it had shown a good account
of itself. On Monday General Pershing ordered an inspection team to visit
the unit and make a report. The team included the chief of the Army schools,
a lieutenant colonel from the Operations Section, and Colonel Fiske, then
deputy training officer of the AEF. The report is concise and thorough.
The three pages of “Observations and Conclusions” listed specific procedural
or organizational changes needed to avoid similar incidents, such as:

To facilitate rapid exit, hand ropes should be placed on both sides
of the dugout steps, the trenches themselves should be provided with steps
or ramps, and the whole procedure drilled until every man knows what he
is to do.

The German artillery appears to have registered on the Artois trenches
some days previously. The supporting artillery observers should have noted
what the Germans were doing and warned the infantry of what to expect.

More important than the accurate comments and recommendations themselves
was the speed with which they were disseminated to the AEF. Less than two
weeks after the raid, copies of the report were distributed to the Army
and corps schools as well as to all general staff sections in the AEF down
to division level.37

Page 20

A problem began almost as the Americans arrived on the Continent and
persisted in the AEF through the end of the war—the shortage of platoon
leaders. Initially the AEF estimated that it would need only 6,000 replacement
officers; however, officer losses in the first engagements, especially
of platoon leaders, were far above anticipated levels. The G–5 hastily
put together an officers candidate school, which by the time of the armistice
was graduating a staggering 5,000 infantry officers per month. Artillery,
engineer, and signal officer courses were graduating another 1,400 monthly.
Transforming a young enlisted man into an infantry platoon leader is a
daunting task in the best of circumstances even in peacetime; doing it
in a few weeks in wartime is almost impossible. As one journalist expressed
the problem after the war, “A lot of men are buried in the Argonne because
people cannot in a short time learn even the elements of warfare so as
not to forget them in the stress of battle.”38

By the fall of 1918 the problem of finding qualified officer candidates
was threatening the program, and it is questionable whether the level could
have continued through the winter had the armistice not intervened. Fiske
mused after the war that by September the AEF had experienced “the practical
disappearance of suitable officer material from the ranks of the divisions.”
Enlisted men in the United States had been classified by their civilian
backgrounds, and virtually all “above the grade of unskilled laborer” had
been routed into various military occupational specialties. As a result,
“the men of courage, intelligence, energy, education, and general capacity
so desperately needed to lead infantry platoons were behind desks or mending
roads or otherwise engaged” in areas of less need. AEF headquarters unsuccessfully
protested the practice, and Fiske believed it “one of the most serious
mistakes of the war.”39 With a vision to the future, he might have called
it one of the most serious mistakes in the history of the U.S. Army in
the twentieth century.

***

Military organizations have long been required to report in some detail
on their operations. These reports sometimes served merely to ensure that
a contemporary record existed for historical purposes. More often, however,
the reports were expected to serve the same use as that

Pag 21

stated in General Orders (GO) 21 of the American Expeditionary Forces,
which mandated “reports on each operation (engagement, movement of troops,
construction, installation of a depot, etc.).” The order elaborated: “These
reports will show any errors made and how they may be avoided in the future,
possible general improvements, failure of any material and its cause, etc.,
and also note any scheme or material which gave exceptionally good results.”40

AEF headquarters reinforced these after-action reporting requirements
through 1918, but it was not until the eve of victory that the reports
were standardized in a doctrinal format. GO 196, dated 5 November 1918,
outlined new reporting requirements, replacing the more modest ones in
place since the end of 1917. Its purpose was “to standardize the whole
question of operation orders and reports, and to make cl ear exactly what
operation orders and repor ts G.H.Q. requires.” The order went on to outline
the philosophy behind several of the more significant reports, especially
the war diary, which it described as

a record of events kept in campaign. While it is required to reproduce
in large part the same facts as are given in situation reports, the mere
giving of such facts constitutes the least part of the keeping of the war
diary. What is of most importance is that there should be a narrative of
the operations from which the history of the unit can be gathered and also
professional and especially tactical instruction.41

Subordinate headquarters down to regimental or brigade size were further
required to submit any training or tactical instructions they issued. And
after “any important period of operations,” each division and corps headquarters
had to submit a special report with appropriate maps. The latter document
was clearly seen as an opportunity to capture lessons, with the order specifying:

Great care will be exercised in its compilation because of its military
and historical value. . . . It should be a succinct account covering brief
of orders issued and the general maneuver plan of the commander for each
phase of the engagement, followed by an epitome of events compiled by G–3
from messages and reports received during and after the action.42

***

Page 22

A perusal of the volumes of Military Operations in the Official History
of the American Expeditionary Forces impresses the reader with just how
far the organization progressed in its capabilities and efficiency in a
relatively short time. A typical example is the “Tactical Instructions”
from an after-action report of a brigade of the 30th Division on 14 October
1918. The memorandum has paragraphs on assembly areas, ini-tial dispositions,
fire action, passage of obstacles, mopping up trenches, attacking machine
gun nests, organization of conquered ground, and liaison. A few excerpts
are enlightening:

Rifle fire was used to its utmost; the men had been taught to fire as
they advanced, stopping momentarily to fire while the line advanced continuously.

Automatic rifles were kept well to the front, small groups with automatic
rifles penetrated between machine gun nests taking them from the flank
or rear. Rifle grenades were effectively used to break up machine gun nests.

In order to cut the wire, four engineer soldiers, three with heavy wire
cutters and one with an ax, followed each half platoon of the lead battalion,
in addition, seven hundred heavy wire cutters were issued to each regiment
and men were detailed to carry same and practiced beforehand in cutting
wire with them.

Telephones and runners were found to be the most reliable means of communication.
43

One can find many such lessons in after-action reports incorporated
into doctrinal publications of the War Department and the AEF as they evolved
over the course of the war. The most important works during and immediately
after the war in conveying contemporary developments throughout the command
were the “Notes on Recent Operations.” All were pocket-size manuals marked
“strictly confidential,” to be “kept at all times in your personal possession,
. . . not to be carried into front line trenches,” and not to be shown
to foreigners, presumably including the French and British. The first,
published in July 1917, comprised 19 foreign documents, 6 British, 2 French,
and 11 German. The documents ranged from the German “Instructions for gunners
drawn from the lessons of the Battle of the Somme,” and “Lessons to be
Drawn by Infantry from the Combats on the Right Bank of the Meuse” to the
British “Supply of Ammunition in the Field.” Many were quite specific in
outlining doctrine. The British instructions for battle, in discussing
the difficulties of mopping up trench lines and wiping out pockets of resistance,
stated:

Although the leading waves of an assault should not halt owing to these
pockets, provided there is room to pass between and establish the line
beyond, it is impor-

Page 23

tant that the enemy thus left behind should be rounded up by reserves
furnished from the rear without delay, at any rate unless the advance has
swept so far beyond as to render these pockets powerless for harm.44

A total of four “Notes” were published. Numbers two and three had a
mixture of European documents and AEF and War College analysis. Number
four was published only after the war and consisted solely of a nine-page
AEF analysis of the Meuse-Argonne campaign.45

The other important document that sheds light on how the AEF absorbed
and distributed lessons from its experience in the war is the Infantry
Drill Regulations, the fundamental document outlining what the Army expected
of the infantryman. Its evolution through the war shows very clearly that
the AEF was taking the experiences of the war and incorporating them into
its formal doctrine. The Catechismal Edition Infantry Drill Regulations:
Corrected to November 1, 1917, was clearly a peacetime document. Its question-and-answer
format contained separate sections on the conduct of the soldier; on the
squad, the company, and the battalion; on combat; and a final catch-all,
“Miscellaneous.” Designed for the prewar, peacetime soldier, it promoted
rote regurgitation of answers at inspections, promotion boards, and the
like. Nothing in its precepts encouraged the soldier to learn, to think,
to analyze situations, or to adapt theory to the realities of combat.46

By the following spring the document had completely changed. The experiences
of war on the Western Front had transformed the peacetime document into
a realistic tactical manual to train a soldier to improvise and to lead
others on the battlefield. Its five sections now incorporated drill, combat,
marches and camps, ceremonies and inspections, and manuals. Although prescriptive
in nature, the format was no longer couched in a question-and-answer mode,
and the soldier was bluntly informed that he was expected to think for
himself in tactical situations. After eight paragraphs describing formations
and methods of crossing open areas, for example, the authors reminded the
reader that the methods described were only suggestions, that “other and
better formations may be devised to fit particular cases, [and that] the
best formation is the one which advances the line farthest with the least
loss of men, time, and control.”47

Page 24

A few paragraphs later, it turns even more pragmatic, advising soldiers
that when charging, or running forward, becomes impractical, “any method
of advance that brings the attack closer to the enemy, such as crawling,
should be employed.”48

The final version of the regulations, published just after the war,
incorporated the tremendous amount of experience the AEF acquired in the
late summer and fall of 1918. On crossing open areas, for example, they
elaborated on certain tactics, such as advances by rushes or by infiltration
of small units, which previously only off icers had directed. Skirmish
lines, for example, were to “cross open fire-swept areas by [the] advance
of individuals or squads,” with platoon leaders resuming command only after
some predetermined terrain feature had been reached. All these measures
reflected a tactical decentralization undreamed of in the prewar, parade-ground
Army.49

A final category of reports includes the variety of combat accounts
written after the war. The formal after-action reports of many AEF units
are buttressed by hundreds of memoirs by participants at all levels in
the war, as well as by hundreds of unit histories. To these may be added
the formal assessments of AEF actions and activities compiled in the decade
following the war by various official researchers. As in any such melange,
they offer a range of suggestions to the analyst, some brilliant but many
flawed or worthless.

The formal after-action reports are often detailed, analytical, and
critical, incorporating accounts of hundreds of problems encountered at
every level. The First Army Report of Operations, signed by its commander,
General Hunter Liggett, recounts problems the Army encountered as well
as solutions or suggested improvements for the future. Its topics range
from problems in traffic control at St. Mihiel because of too few military
police to difficulties in crossing no-man’s-land during the Meuse-Argonne
because of shortages of pioneer and road-building equipment, with the general
intent “to profit by past experi ence.” In a secti on enti tl ed “Special
Considerations and Recommendations,” a plethora of suggestions for better
organization, training, weapons, coordination between branches, and employment

Page 25

of aircraft comes tumbling out, a potpourri of what a later Army would
call lessons learned.50

Personal memoirs and unit histories cover the gamut from the incisive
to the worthless. Some were written with a cause to champion, be it preparedness,
self-glorification, or “setting the record straight.” As in any historical
endeavor, the motto must be, “Let the reader beware.” Unit histories are
likewise a difficult area to generalize. Some are useful as a record of
the day-to-day happenings of the unit, and some are entertaining as social
history, giving extensive accounts of personalities and events through
the eyes of participants. Most were written for subscription by veterans,
and few have much constructive criticism.

The Army’s Superior Board on Organization and Tactics conducted the
most important formal study of the war experience immediately following
the conflict, rendering its report in June 1920. In it the board drew a
number of lessons that were on the mark; others showed that its crystal
ball was a bit clouded; while the many omissions of important topics speak
for themselves. The board endorsed, for example, the continued existence
of separate machine gun battalions, the wartime practice of slaving tanks
to the maneuver of foot infantry, and, on a larger scale, the huge, ungainly
“square” (four regiments in two brigades) infantry divisions that the AEF
had fielded in France. In fact, Pershing’s reaction, as expressed in his
cover letter, will surprise anyone with an image of the iron-jawed American
general as a somewhat inflexible thinker. After arguing that the AEF divisional
organization was appropriate only for the circumstances in which the AEF
fought in France, he stated that it would be a mistake to think that future
warfare would in any way resemble the recent conflict. Finally, he observed,
“The false doctrine that the division does not need to maneuver arises
from our experience in the breakthrough and especially through the difficulties
which we faced and the errors which we committed and which it seems that
many of us now prefer not to avoid and not to correct but to call ‘the
lessons of the war.’”51

What may one conclude of the uses of experience and reports by the AEF?
With a rigid but workable system for rapidly digesting battlefield experiences,
it did quite well at learning the rudiments of warfare in a very short
time. Whether such a system would have continued had the

Page 26

war lasted into 1919 or whether it would have evolved into a more flexible
one for developing and disseminating doctrine is a matter for speculation.
Again, the most serious challenge stemmed from the general lack of experience
in military matters throughout the AEF and not just in the lower ranking
soldiers who had limited responsibilities.

On the larger question of how an organization—the U.S. Army, for example—learned
from the experiences of the AEF, the results are, with some exceptions,
far less sanguine. In the short term, the Army simply ignored many lessons
the AEF had learned at such high cost in blood and forgot them over the
long term. These lessons range from the tactical to the operational and
strategic levels. In the tactical-operational realm, cold-weather injury
was a significant cause of manpower losses during World War II, the Korean
War, and even the Vietnam War. This broad category includes frostbite,
hypothermia, and injuries caused by long immersion in water, such as trench
foot and immersion foot. Treatment of cold-weather injuries is difficult,
often futile, and sometimes limited to the amputation of extremities to
halt the spread of gangrene— prevention, rather than treatment, is crucial.
A well-conditioned soldier with a minor wound often healed rapidly and
returned to duty quickly; cold injuries of even moderate degree, however,
often rendered even well-trained and experienced soldiers unfit for duty
for long periods, sometimes permanently. Yet these injuries constituted
only a minor problem for the AEF during World War I, thanks largely to
British AEF instructors who emphasized the role of the chain of command
in preventive measures. If commanders checked their soldiers’ feet for
trench foot and ensured that they had proper clothing and equipment to
keep warm, cold-weather injuries would not occur. As a result, they were
a minuscule percentage of total injuries in the AEF. Yet this easily effected
preventive mandate was largely forgotten before the next war. Cold-weather
injuries caused significant troop losses in both the Italian and northern
European campaigns of World War II and in the Korean War.52

At the operational and strategic levels, there is the case of drawing
a “lesson” that was an entirely erroneous application of wartime experience.
The deployment of railway artillery for the coastal defenses of the United
States in postwar years constituted a si gnif icant expense throughout
World War II. Because the Coast Artillery Corps was the

Page 27

only branch of the U.S. Army with experience in indirect fire of heavy
artillery before the war, Pershing had assigned it the responsibility for
all heavy artillery—during World War I, those guns over five inches in
diameter (about 130-mm.). In addition to towed artillery, this included
the huge siege guns twelve inches and over. Because these pieces were so
heavy that French roads would not support their movement, they were mounted
and moved on modified or specially designed railway flatcars. Impressed
with their effectiveness as siege artillery, the men of the Coast Artillery
Corps came back from their war experiences enthusiastically advocating
the railroad gun as a coast artillery weapon in the United States.

Partly because Congress increasingly saw the coast artillery fortifications
as anachronistic in the emerging age of the airplane, it was reluctant
to appropriate funds for manning and maintaining the seacoast forts after
the war. The chief of the Coast Artillery was, however, successful in persuading
Congress to appropriate funds for railway artillery by asserting that it
would enhance and supplement the forts and expand their ability to defend
the coastal cities. Superficially, railroad guns for the Coast Artillery
sounded like a good idea—even some die-hards in the corps could see that
the fortifications would become increasingly vulnerable to bombardment
from the air. Railroad guns, it was envisioned, would be able to range
up and down the coasts at will, shelling a hostile fleet at any point.
In practice, it was an impossible concept. The weight of the railroad artillery
meant that most railroad arteries could not carry them without special
reinforcement. The guns could not fire from any random point on the line,
but had to have special reinforced concrete hardstands on railroad spurs.
In effect, they were only a little more mobile than the fortifications,
with all the same vulnerabilities to attack from air or sea. In the process
of deploying, manning, and maintaining railway coast artillery, the United
States squandered millions of scarce dollars during the interwar period,
all to field a weapon that was unable to perform its mission of destroying
enemy warships and was obsolete before it was built.53

Another lesson of World War I quickly forgotten was the shortage of
infantry lieutenants caused by diverting to other uses all soldiers possessing
any practical skills, already cited as “one of the most serious mistakes
of the war.” The shortage of lieutenants was a significant problem in

Page 28

World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. In World War II and the Korean War,
the Army attempted to solve the problem by giving direct commissions to
competent noncommissioned officers, thus directly creating a secondary
problem of noncommissioned officer shortages.

To its credit, the Army did attempt to capture the wealth of experience
in the myriad afteraction reports of operations in the war. During the
interwar years a staff section in the Army General Staff studied these
reports and integrated the various reports on individual operations into
comprehensive accounts. Often, they sent these versions to the participants
for corrections and recommendations. Although these were not published
before World War II began, the exercise undoubtedly enriched the tactical
and operational proficiency of the staff officers making the studies—one
of whom, Dwight D. Eisenhower, later commanded all Allied forces in the
European Theater.54

Other cases, beyond the scope of this study, abound—for example, the
use, or misuse, of black troops, or those of different cultural backgrounds
or race. Another example pertained to the dependence on other nations for
the provision of contemporary military equipment of all types—and the associated
length of time needed to build an effective war economy to produce such
equipment. (The U.S. Army never had a qualitative edge over its German
opponents during World War II despite the superior productive capabilities
of American industry.) Still others can be found in the variety of issues
that surrounded the demobilization efforts following the armistice, both
in Europe and in the United States. Indeed, an institution like the U.S.
Army and the nation it defends can still learn much from how it has failed
to learn from experience in the past as it now faces an uncertain future.